Chapter 13: The Shop Window

The Atheist’s Creed

I believe in the primacy of science,
to provide a framework for life,
a reason for being.

I believe in the total adequacy of evolution by natural selection
to produce the visible world,
to enable the beauty and complexity of nature.

I believe in what I can see, what I can touch,
in the tangible, the physical, the realistic,
in the absolute arbitration of hard scientific evidence.

I believe in the goodness of humankind,
in the evolution of man,
in the evolving capacity to conquer war, famine, disease,
to evolve to perfection,
through the power of intellect and reason.

I believe in me,
in my innate ability, in my mind,
in my own ability to solve my problems,
in my own moral standards.

I believe I only remain in the world as a fading trace,
as a memory of my friends,
as web pages traced on the Internet, a Googled ego,
as fading books in a library,
as rusting artefacts, buried, discovered,
as a look in the eyes of my children.

I believe in the finality of death,
the rotting of the body,
ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
star’s atoms returned to space.

I believe in nothing

 

So what is it that’s on show? As we enter the humanist shop, it seems that content has been replaced by marketing and hype. What seems so good, is really rather superficial. Far from humanism being a pinnacle of human thinking, it is rather a step back. The question why becomes a superficial question. Reality is reduced to bricks and mortar and the depth of human experience is denied.

Community is replaced by the individual, a goal at the heart of the enlightenment. It is all down to the rational ability of the individual. Whatever wisdom, understanding, insights had been accumulate through thousands of years of reflection are now abandoned. There is no tradition, no past. It’s up to you: you are on your own.

Humanism offers you isolation, cast into a desert, a loneliness of soul without any solid signposts. In the middle of the desert, it’s up to you which direction you take. You might as well throw a die and start walking. Ignore the heat, the thirst, the hunger, the cold. Nature of against you and will ultimately bury you.

There is no reference point, no example. You are your example. And the faith you have is faith in your own goodness, your own ability to logically construct your life, to rationalise. There are no examples, no wisdom to consult, no mentors. This is such a distressing thought that atheists will turn to Darwin, trying to draw guidance for living, even for marriage from what Darwin did and said.

Not only does humanism caste you adrift, it leaves you with one certainty: death. Death is final; there is nothing afterwards. And that makes it difficult to delude oneself of value and purpose beforehand. It makes one a pointless accident, adrift in a sea of chaos and meaningless, temporarily relief by some order which you fight to maintain as degeneration and disintegration pursue you as  entropy rules your life and health.

So we flee death, sanitising it. Wrapping it up with comforting words, hiding it in the funeral parlour. We sing ‘I did it my way’ at the funeral. We put on silly costumes. We try to laugh our way out of hopelessness, celebrating lives. And being thankful. For what? And to whom? There is nobody out there to be thankful to.

Humanism offers us compete hopelessness individually and corporately as we and the universe wind down until ultimately there are a few electrons and proton floating in nothingness, with the distance of galaxies between them.

So we struggle for meaning, temporary, perhaps lost daily. Meaning in having a family, meaning ibn doing something in a job, meaning which only acts as an anti-depressant, a drug which sustains us in the now, which is so temporary, we do not look forward. An even that meaning is difficult to retain. It slips through our fingers; it is broken by failure, job loss, marriage breakdown, diseases, poverty,

Humanism offers you a complete, unrelenting hopelessness. And the encouraging message ‘Just get over it’. That’s the way it is.  Seek sedation to dull the pain of this. Perhaps walking zombies have a better life.

Humanism offers us injustice. A permanent injustice. People get away with things. Dictators die without any comeback or trial for acts of genocide. Child molesters die with their crimes only discovered years later. Do what you like when you like to whom you like – or hate. There is no comeback. Neither are there any moral absolutes. If you feel something’s wrong, that is a delusion. Because in the humanist’s world what is right and wrong is just a matter of taste. Whether that taste is for human flesh, for war, for torture. Just do it. If people wrong you just forget it. No one will deal with it. The perpetrator will live on, oblivious to the damage cause or even happy to have caused damage and happy in the knowledge that the very worst will be a few years in prison, or even an execution which launches me into nothing.

Whatever Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and endless others did on the name of atheism will never be corrected. Humanism expunges accountability.  Justice requires a judge. But if the criminal is the judge and jury, the outcome is inevitable and the extent of delusion is unbounded. Humanism strips us of a moral reference point. There is no external source of absolute morals. We make up our own rules. Or in a democracy we consult and vote on morals. So morals are derived from instruments of power where the party or the individual who can shout loudest, who can offer the most incentives, who can appeal to the selfishness of people, is the party or individual who win and then decides what the rules are. Inevitably to suit their interests.

Nothing is offered in response to evil. You simply have to live with it. Some attempts may be made to neutralise the concept. Perhaps evil is not a useful idea. Perhaps we should replace it by ‘responsibility’. And then we can take a deterministic view and deny that we have any free will. WE rage against a non-existent God about evil, which in the atheist worldview is just part of life which should not upset us.  Humanism appears to offer us a licence to do what we want. Freed from the shackles of imposed rules and the demands of society, we can get on with life. The inevitable destructive force is inside us. After a while we experience the effects of our delusion of freedom. WE suffer loneliness after failed attempts to get people to do what we want, we leave trails of destruction.  The satisfaction of our desires leaves a gaping hole.

Humanism offers an endless chase after satisfaction, purpose, completion, and the ultimate heart rending disappointment when it provides none of these. Whatever we do it’s not enough. Whatever goal we achieve, whoever we climb over to get there, we find the mountain is still to be climbed. And dissatisfaction must be cauterised. WE chase drugs, sex and rock and roll, we pursue glittering prizes which only fade into the distance. We have to deny an incompleteness which plagues us.

Humanism condemns us to living with ourselves. It provides no relief, no healing. Our deepest problems walk around with us. We can move houses, we can change jobs, change countries, but it makes no difference. Because it is the regrets, the hurts we have experienced, the hurts we have caused, the wrong done to us by parents, siblings, friends, the hate and hurt we have turned into vindictiveness and sarcasm. Like a sticky plaster which we can’t get rid of, our inadequacies are always there. And if we are honest the ultimate offering of atheism is suicide. Because if there is nothing beyond death, if death is final extinguishing, then suicide offers the only hope. But something in us loves life, knows that death is wrong, and is not how things should be. We fight to live. Hence we fight atheism which offers the sting of death as the only hope.

Even when we think we have some moral framework, some beliefs about what is right and wrong, those intuitions and feeling are not a product of a humanist philosophy, rather they are plagarised from the Judeo- Christian tradition and thinking. Humanism provides a moral vacuum which must be occupied by something.  

Humanism is the ultimate stamp-collecting hobby. Collecting diverse ideas from science, mythology Greek thought the humanist arranges them in an album, attached to pages with adhesive hinges, so as not to damage them, and so that they can be quickly removed if they fail to please. And inevitably we are attracted to the colourful stamps of the former state of Czechoslovakia, of San Marino, of an obscure island in the Indian Ocean, which have no inherent value and are bought by the kilogram.

So humanism offers hopelessness, pointlessness, and exposure to self-destruction. It offers temporary relief from a pain that not only it cannot resolve, but it will amplify. It offers an intense loneliness, an impossible goal, and unachievable ambition which will only resolve into frustration and disappointment. It offers a drugged, zombie existence, an anarchy only constrained by social structure and an appeal to self and pride. It offers a nihilistic philosophy. Out of nothing, living for nothing, returning to nothing.

Atheism is far from being a moral position without an agenda. Just like theists have agendas, atheism carries a strong agenda, generated by a hate of a God who is not there. Why rage and rail and argue about something which is not there? What is it that drives atheism? If there is no God, why not just get on with life? If atheism offers such an awful prospect, such a bum deal, why do so many pursue it?

Continue to Chapter 14